Dick and Faye Post ready to semi-retire

Lifelong jersey breeders Dick and Faye Post made history as they wound up their Tauwhare dairy farm and stud Posterity Jerseys, with their top cow Posterity Man Susie fetching the highest price ever paid for a dairy cow in New Zealand, breaking a 50-year record previously set by a Holstein Friesian.

Dick has always been into Jersey cows, being born and bred on his parents’ Waikato farm which he and Faye also recently sold. As a school boy, while other farmers were busy putting Friesian and cross-bred cows over their Jerseys, Dick would get hold of the AI book and change the notation to Jersey for some of his favourite cows which were intended to go to Friesian. “The following calving, dad would say ‘we didn’t get many Friesian calves’.” Now, after 40 years of using nominated sires to breed big capacity Jerseys with good structure and fertility and functional udders, Dick and Faye are ready to semi-retire. They took their herd of 265 cows and 85 in-calf heifers to an online auction, where Posterity Man Susie’s dam, Posterity Strider Susie, sold first for $23,100, and the Posts, watching at home, barely had time to celebrate before their top cow’s auction came up next. She sold for $55,000.“We knew we had something good, and we knew there was a lot of interest, but we really didn’t expect the bidding to go that high. We’ve never seen anything like it before.” But Posterity Man Susie is a genuine top cow, a third-generation pedigree and the result of 40 years of nominated service. Her sire, Tironui Superman, is the second highest BW Jersey bull in New Zealand, and he has produced four female calves in a row with production worth of more than 500. Posterity Man Susie boasts her own phenomenal numbers, including a protein BV of 23 and a fat BV of 54.

A high stocking rate at the Posts’ farm has put competition amongst the herd, and allowed for the cream to rise to the top. Posterity Man Susie’s buyers, Shaun and Anna Thomas of newly established South Otago stud Yellowstone, who also bought Posterity Strider Susie, wanted to fast-track their own breeding programme, and recognised it would take them 40 years to breed a cow like Posterity Man Susie. Dick says it was a great sale made all the more successful by supporters of the Post family, including stock agents Brian Robinson and Andrew Reyland, and Wendy Wilke from LIC who collated and provided all the required records. “Their expertise was invaluable.” The cow featured on the front of the Post’s auction catalogue, Posterity Fillip Vale, was sold into a Friesian herd. Dick heard from the buyers as soon as they got her home, to tell him she had filled up the Friesian bale in the shed. Dick says this catalogue is now his bible. He has entered in all the dam numbers, ‘because that means everything’ and now has all the information he needs about his 40 years in breeding right at the tip of his fingers.

While they are officially out of the dairy industry, the story continues for Dick and Faye Post, who have settled on a block close to their old farm. They are carrying 200 stock units including last year’s calves, one of which is Posterity Man Susie’s and their highest remaining BW cow, some replacements, some other good cows that weren’t in calf, and some high BW Posterity bulls. They will have another sale next year.

Article sourced from NZDairy – Written by Kelly Deeks